If I remember rightly by the end of San Andreas CJ hates his neighbourhood. He's fought tooth and nail to get himself and his sister set up with a decent life and all he wants is his brother to join them, especially after the betrayal of his closest friends he's thorougly disillusioned with gang life.

However his brother refuses to leave and can't escape the ganger mentality, so CJ and his sister have no choice but to return to their old house or face abandoning their brother.

I really liked San Andreas' story and thought CJ was a great character, but that last return to the 'hood didn't sit right with me. Sweet gives him a lecture about how he "stole to buy your sister shoes" and how he suffered for their ma while CJ ran away, and all I was thinking was here was a guy who sat on his ass and watched his neighbourhood collapse, couldn't save his mother or lift his family out of poverty, guilt-tripping a man who's worked like hell and risked life and limb to give his family a better life and get Sweet out of jail.

Not that I agree with that either, but the Fox half of the article gives you the impression that there's some funeral-equivalent of a traffic warden or something.

A Fox article referencing a Daily Mail article. You get more facts and less bias at The Onion.

That's true. I checked the original Daily Mail when I saw the story, that's why I said they backpedalled sharpish, but you've got to admit an automatic charge for an over-running funeral of all things is pretty damn petty, small-minded and insensitive.

Gotta love English councils. They're the petty minded cockends who use anti-terror surveillance laws to spy on people putting their bins in the wrong place. I wouldn't have thought even they would have been so rampantly insensitive, although apparently they backpedaled sharpish and refunded the charge when people complained.

No problem mate. Apparently GFWL acts as an online anti-cheat system, and as it can't tell the difference between multi and single player games once it detects FOSE altering the memory it steps in to stop it. Therefore the only way for FOSE to do what it does is to disable Live as it starts up.

If for some bizarre reason you want Live on again you just start up F3 without FOSE, as it's only disabled when FOSE is running.

How do you stop GFFWL (sic) from doing its thing when playing Fallout 3? I find it totally useless but don't know how to turn it off. Trust Microsoft to make it difficult to do things the way I want them done

copy the contents of FOSE to your F3 folder and start it with the mod manager. FOMM will automatically start FOSE and FOSE automatically kills GFWL. You'll then need to copy your DLC to your Data folder to get it to run and FOMM will help you order and select them as well as any other mods you might have running. They're all small files and easy to install, a few minutes work and you're GFWL free and set up for mods if you're interested.

So you finished it already? How many hours was it? Or was it similar length to, say, The Pitt (which I just finished)?

It's longer than The Pitt. Poking into all the corners it took me about 4-5 hours, although I imagine just blasting through the objectives would be half that at the most. It's more like Anchorage than The Pitt though, combat heavy and story light, plus once you've finished for some unfathomable reason the doors lock so you can't roam about the ship exploring.

If you buy them from MS Live, can you backup the DLC files and re-install them without having to go online or do any activation crap?

You can backup and play offline by copying the .esm and .bsa files from C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\XLive\DLC into your Fallout 3 data folder and ticking it in the launcher like a mod. Works for all the DLC and sidesteps a lot of the GFWL problems.

I wasn't calling anyone a loony. I know some people like all the pointless extras in the same way some people like stamp collecting and train-spotting. I was just wondering whether the "special edition" crap is bought by the collector types or just by ordinary gamers that've gone a bit bonkers over the hype.

When I was trying out MMO's last Christmas I bought Age of Conan's special edition because it cost £7.99 and the regular DVD inna box cost £9.99. I quickly realised why that was when I got a fucking huge Tome thing full of shit through the post. Goddamn cheap map of Hyboria, books of art that I've no interest in and all sorts of rubbish, nicely contained in a box that fits comfortably on no shelf in the house.

Why do people buy these things when they cost more than the regular game? Is it the sort of people who sit through all the extras when they buy DVD's?

I'm not expecting Shakespeare. Maybe I should re-phrase to make myself more clear:

"After watching a clip of The Clone Wars series, it is my opinion that the dialogue, even in comparison to the original Star Wars and childrens shows I remember from childhood, is abysmally stilted, uninspired and on a level with badly written fan-fiction."

Lucas' screenplays have been awful recently. I blame his increasing power, back in the days of Star Wars people would turn round and tell him when something didn't make sense, didn't flow right or was flat out shit. As he got richer and more influential nobody would dare, which is why the whole prequel trilogy and everything based off it is a complete mess.

For fuck's sake look at that guys face in the link. Ex-slave turned spiritualist martial arts monk looks like a stroppy teenager that's been forced to clean his room.

Feel free to delay it indefinitely. I saw a clip of the Clone Wars series when i was browsing Sky Anytime and even in a twenty second clip it had some of the worst dialogue I've ever encountered. Isn't it about time they dropped the prequel shit along with Anakin "Where's Padme? Noooooo!" Skywalker and return to a good setting for games? And remake Tie Fighter.

I've never had any luck with those bowl lifter things. My two spaniels refused to go anywhere near them, and my lab just knocked hers over and ate off the floor. In the end I gave up with them. It's not like caribou carcasses come equipped with a lift that raises them to an appropriate height for wolves so why bother with the dog's food bowls?

The star destroyer one is just plain broken. I mean as I consider it a bug. Here’s a tip: When aligning the star destroyer and trying to make it go “yellow” sometimes the directions on the screen will show you to leave your analog sticks in neutral yet it will still be red.

Worst of all, the onscreen control help that tells you when and how to push the analog sticks to move the ship are flat-out wrong much of the time.

It's been a while since I played it, but as far as I remember one stick turns it left and right while the other tips it's nose up and down. Once it's properly level you pull both sticks down until Tie fighters turn up and shoot at you. Rinse and Repeat. It's not like the onscreen prompts are necessary in any way for that.

Worse than any dodgy controls is the concept behind the whole section. I mean, pulling a Star Destroyer out of the sky? Not even Darth Vader or the Emperor pulled off that kind of shit, it reeked of pandering to the idiot masses who need something sparkly to gawk at. Whats up for the next Force Unleashed, playing pool with planets?

I predict a trilogy centered around the character of Arthas. Delving into the emotional trauma of being a special prince and the responsibility that comes with his power. Then when his soul is consumed by Frostmourne he spontaneously dyes his hair black, flicks it over one eye and saunters down the road thrusting his pelvis at passersby.

that must mean they are just like jesus.. maybe we should start a religion around them

Maybe you could have a little respect eh? When this guy was barely out of his teens he was in a battle that saw 250,000 men die, he also lived through the largest naval battle in history. What the fuck do you want him to remember about the sacrifice of his friends? That they died for freedom and justice and all that shit, or that they were killed for nothing but empire-building and national cock-waving and in so doing set up the most devastating war in history?

Millions of ordinary young men died for byzantine treaties and the posturing of old men, what's the problem with one of the last survivors clinging on to the idea that his generation died for something more noble?

a Predator caught out in the open can be taken out by a single marine "without too much of a fight,"

I got a little touch of nerdrage when I heard that, but then I realised it's probably spot on for the setting. The marines in Aliens had armour-piercing explosive rounds, motion trackers, IR goggles, self-targeting cannons and all kinds of kit that would pretty much make swiss cheese out of a Predator caught off balance. Certainly would have made Arnie's time in the jungle easier.

As long as they improve and refine I don't really mind. It's not like any Bioware games are particularly original anyway. The previews for ME2 suggests they've listened to people's complaints about things like tedious exploration and improved them, so I'm vaguely hopeful.

I'd like a Jade Empire sequel sometime though, the oriental art and setting was a welcome break from the future/dull in Kotor and later Mass Effect.